Nicholas Stoller made his directorial debut with the raunchy 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which starred Jason Segel as a guy who had to reassess his life after his girlfriend of five years dumped him.

Segel famously dropped his towel in the opening scenes of the film, which led The New York Times to call him "a young actor with nothing to hide."

The two filmmakers have teamed up once again — this time with Miss Piggy, Gonzo and Fozzie Bear in tow — for the family film The Muppets. Segel tells Terry Gross that the only frontal nudity in this film comes from another star of the movie: Kermit the Frog, who never wears pants.

"In terms of our R-rated past, there's an essential sweetness to what we try to do. And that's not that dissimilar to The Muppets even if in Sarah Marshall there's cursing and nudity," adds Stoller. "We're still trying to get at something that's not cynical."

The premise of The Muppets follows three Muppet fans — Segel, Amy Adams and a Muppet named Walter who's voiced by Peter Linz — who want to reunite the Muppet cast and make them as famous as they were back in the day, when movies like The Muppets Take Manhattan and The Great Muppet Caper regularly appeared in theaters.

"We set out to make a Muppet movie that harkened back to the late-'70s, early-'80s Muppets that we grew up with," Segel says. "I had the opportunity to work with my childhood idols, and I wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer. So I set out to make that happen."

Having written a script, Segel and Stoller asked Bret McKenzie, from Flight of the Conchords, to write the lyrics for several original songs featured in the new film.

"We didn't have to tell Bret much in terms of tone, because he's by nature very Muppety," says Segel. "Flight of the Concords is a very Muppety vibe — it's two wide-eyed innocents making their way through a tough New York. So he knew what to do ... right from the start. [And] all the great Muppet movies were musicals."

The film opens with a grand production number featuring hundreds of cast members singing and dancing down Main Street in a place called Small Town USA. It's campy — but intentionally so, says Stoller.

"The Muppets are always winking, there's a kind of self-referential thing going on, so with a little wink, you can get away with a lot of campiness," he says.

The two filmmakers also turned to another Flight of the Conchords alum — James Bobin — to direct The Muppets.

"As soon as he expressed interest, it was a no-brainer," says Stoller. He explains that Bobin often helped them realize if the scenes they had written were realistic.

"It was easy for us to imagine scenes," he says. "We imagined one scene with 10 full-body Muppets running away from an explosion — and James said that it was impossible. He had to do the heavy lifting."

Once Disney gave Stoller and Segel the green light to make The Muppets, the Muppet puppeteers helped fill them in on the cardinal rules of the Muppet world. For instance, Muppets think of themselves as humans in their world. And they are never, ever mean.

"The Muppets don't get laughs at other people's expense," says Segel. "It's part of what I really loved about the Muppets. They don't even want to destroy their villains. They want to reform their villains."

He points to the first Muppet movie, when the villain Doc Hopper wants to cut off Kermit's legs to make frog legs.

"As opposed to destroying him, Kermit is like, 'Maybe you should think about why you don't have friends. Maybe you're just lonely and you need to be a happier person,' " he says. "The Muppets are pure."

The Muppets are also really honest.

"We had a plot point early on, which was a Willy Wonka-style plot, that [villain] Tex Richman [played by Chris Cooper] was actually Kermit in a human suit," says Stoller. "And he was [just being evil] to get the Muppets back together. And both Disney and the puppeteers told us that kids would never understand that — and that Kermit never lies."

Kermit, who's possibly the most famous creation of the late Jim Henson, is performed in the new film by Steve Whitmire, who also does the characters Beaker and Statler. Whitmire is joined by other longtime puppeteers, including Dave Goelz, Bill Barretta and Eric Jacobson, who've all worked with the Muppets for decades.

"You realize what an actual art this is [when you see them,]" says Segel. "It's easy to pick up a puppet from a store and make it talk, but to make a puppet look wistful? I don't know how you do that except with years of experience. ... It's not just a matter of moving your hand open and closed to make the mouth move. Steve [Whitmire] is using all five of his fingers like independent digits ... He's able to go from angry to sad to smiling in very, very subtle ways that I imagine you can only achieve with hours of practice in the mirror."

Both filmmakers stress that The Muppets is a family movie — but that doesn't mean it's been dumbed down in any way.

"I think there's a misconception that a family film has come to mean a children's film, and that's not what it has to be like," says Segel. "The Muppets have an inherent tone that was never going to be dirty or raunchy, though I'm sure some of the executives were nervous that we were doing The Muppets with a sense of irony. But it doesn't take long to realize that we had a pure love for The Muppets."

Interview Highlights

On the character of Walter, a new muppet who plays Jason Segel's brother in the film

Jason Segel: "The character of Walter is sort of an analogue for me in getting this Muppet movie made. He's a wild Muppet fan who ... he sets out to make them as famous as they once were — which was sort of our goal in making this movie."

On creating Walter

Jason Segel: "Nick and I are laughing because we legally have — we did not create the look of Walter. We got to create his personality, and he was very sweet, but we could not describe his physical look because then we would have some legal ownership over Walter. So we did not do that."

On puppeteers

Jason Segel: "I'm glad you asked what the puppeteer has to do. The sad thing is at the end of the day, their job is to be invisible. You're not supposed to think about the puppeteer. But in reality, these guys are acting, they're puppeteering, they're dancing, they're singing, they're doing improv. A lot of times, they're being contortionists. If a puppet is sitting on a couch talking, that means there's a puppeteer scrunched into a hollowed-out couch. ... They're the true geniuses behind this movie."

Nick Stoller: "I asked Eric Jacobson, who plays Miss Piggy, whether he ever got nervous, and he said no, he never got nervous, but his hand falls asleep and it one time fell asleep on a talk show — like Letterman — and he had to pull his hand out and shake it out."

Jason Segel: "Eric Jacobson plays Fozzie, plays Miss Piggy, plays Animal and a few others. In any other context, that's like a Peter Sellers-esque feat — but it's our job not to even think about that. And so I can't give enough credit to these puppeteers."

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE MUPPETS")

STEVE WHITMIRE: (As Kermit) Miss Piggy, it's time for our song.

ERIC JACOBSON: (As Miss Piggy) Okay.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

Kermit, Miss Piggy and their old Muppet friends reunited last year in the movie "The Muppets." Today we'll hear Terry's interview with the film's writers, Nick Stoller and Jason Segel. Segel is also one of the film's human stars of the show

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE MUPPETS")

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (As characters) (singing) It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights. It's time to meet the Muppets on "The Muppet Show" tonight. It's time to put on makeup, it's time to dress up right. It's time to get things started - why don't you get things started"

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (As character) I always dreamed we'd be back here.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (As character) Dreams, those are nightmares.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing) It's time to get things started on the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational - this is what we call "The Muppet Show."

DAVIES: "The Muppets" movie won an Oscar for Best Original Song, and the film is now out on DVD. Here's why the Muppets reunite in the new movie and decide to put on a show. Jason Segel plays Gary, a nice guy living in Smalltown, USA. He has a younger brother named Walter, and Walter is a Muppet. Having grown up in the human world, Walter would do anything to meet another Muppet. So when Gary and his girlfriend plan a vacation in L.A., Walter insists on coming along and taking a tour of the old Muppet studio.

But the studio is dilapidated and deserted, and Walter learns an oil baron plans on tearing it down to drill for oil underneath unless the Muppets can raise $10 million to buy the studio.

So Walter, Gary and his girlfriend set out to reunite the Muppets and stage a telethon to raise the money. Before writing the screenplay for the Muppet movie, Jason Segel and Nick Stoller collaborated on the film "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Segel also stars in the CBS series "How I Met Your Mother." Stoller directed "Get Him to the Greek." Terry spoke to them in November, when "The Muppets" was released in theaters.

GROSS: So let's start with the premise of the movie. And the premise is that, that Jason, that your younger brother is actually a Muppet who's having trouble finding his place in the world because he's never met another Muppet. He's never met anybody or anything like himself.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: Yeah.

GROSS: How'd you come up with that as the premise?

SEGEL: Well, I mean, Nick and I came up with it together, but the character of Walter is sort of an analog for me in getting this Muppet movie made. He's a wild Muppet fan who when he finds the Muppets, they're not in the place that he was when he, you know, the Muppets that he grew up with. And so he sets out to make them as famous as they once were, which is - that was sort of our goal in making this movie.

GROSS: To rescue them from being washed-up?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, comedy really moves in cycles, and I think that the kind of purity of the Muppets had been taken over by cynical sense of humor. And so we set out to make a Muppet movie that harkened back to, like, the late '70s, early '80s Muppets that we grew up with.

STOLLER: We also have been, you know, asking ourselves, like, where have the Muppets been. Why hasn't there been a Muppet movie? And so - in such a long time. And so we put those words into Walter's mouth.

GROSS: So in the story, so Jason, your character and your girlfriend, played by Amy Adams, are going to go to L.A., and Walter really wants to come and go to the Muppet studio. And you finally decide okay, you're going to take him. And everybody's so happy. You're all going to L.A. together.

And then there's this great production number called "Life's A Happy Song." And so, like, hundreds of people are down Main Street in Smalltown, USA, that's the name of the town, singing this song. And it is so - it is just really, like, so delightful.

So before we hear the song, talk about asking Bret McKenzie from "Flight of the Conchords" - he's one of the co-stars and co-writers of the songs in that show - to write this song. He did several original songs for "The Muppets" movie. What did you tell him you wanted from this opening production number?

SEGEL: Well, Nick and I had written a rough sketch of the idea of the production number, you know, when we were writing the script. And then when James Bobin came on to do the movie, he brought Bret McKenzie along with him, and James Bobin directed many of the "Flight of the Conchords" episodes, and he was one of the creators.

We didn't have to tell Bret much in terms of tone because he is - he's by nature very Muppety. The Flight of the Concords themselves, it's a very Muppety kind of vibe: It's two wide-eyed innocents making their way through a tough New York. And so he knew what to do with that number, right from the start.

STOLLER: And in our initial meeting with James - I'd been friends with James for a few years - but in our initial meeting on this movie, he said the movie should open with a song that's about how everything's great, but everything's not great. You know?

GROSS: So - but everything is kind of great in that opening.

SEGEL: Well, you know, hidden beneath the surface is Walter feeling like he doesn't quite belong in this town. And the Amy Adams character is feeling like our relationship is a bit stunted because of how close I am with Walter. So very, very subtly under the surface, we plant the seeds of the problems that are going to come up later in the film.

GROSS: True to all that, okay.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

STOLLER: There's a subtle darkness to that song.

SEGEL: There's a subtle darkness to everything we do, a very subtle darkness.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Okay, so here's "Life's A Happy Song," with its subtle darkness.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIFE'S A HAPPY SONG")

SEGEL: (As Gary) (Singing) Everything is great, everything is grand. I got the whole wide world in the palm of my hand.

PETER LINZ: (As Walter) Singing) Everything is perfect, its falling into place. I can't seem to wipe this smile off my face.

JASON SEGEL AND PETER LINZ: (As Gary and Walter) (Singing) Life's a happy song when there's someone by my side to sing along.

LINZ: (As Walter) (Singing) When your alone life can be a little rough. It makes you feel like your three feet tall. When it's just you, times can be tough when there's no one there to catch your fall.

LINZ: (As Gary and Walter) (Singing) Everything is great everything is grand...

GROSS: So that's "Life's A Happy Song" from the soundtrack of the new Muppet movie, which is called "The Muppets," and we heard Jason Segel and the voice of the new Muppet Walter.

Let's talk about staging this opening production number, in which, like, you have a Main Street, and you have, like hundreds of people singing and dancing in a style that harkens to a lot of really, really corny production numbers. But it's so, like, not corny.

You're both pointing to what is corny about certain production numbers and doing it and not doing that corny thing at the same time.

SEGEL: Yeah, well, we wanted to - we wanted to sort of reference the old MGM-style musicals, which I love. You know, "Singing In the Rain" is one of my favorite movies, and it's intentionally campy.

I think one of the mistakes people make about "Singing in the Rain" is if you're young enough, it just seems like the past, but that movie was actually making fun of 20 years earlier than when it was made. So it's intentionally campy, and I think that was sort of a reference for us in terms of the musical numbers

STOLLER: And the Muppets also are always winking. You know, there's a kind of a self-referential thing going on. And so with a little wink, you can get away with a lot of campiness.

SEGEL: Yeah, absolutely. And we had a great choreographer, a guy called Michael Rooney, who actually is Mickey Rooney's son, who did most of the choreography of the film. It was really awkward because Mickey Rooney makes a great cameo in the first, in the opening number, and I did not know that Michael Rooney was his son.

GROSS: Oh, you didn't?

SEGEL: No, and he kept...

GROSS: Oh, that's so funny.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: And he kept bossing him around, going, like, all right Dad, get over here Dad, get over here Dad. And I went up to him, I'm like: You can't just call an old person dad.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: And he was like: No, that's my actual dad.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: No, I had this all wrong because it's funny, as soon as I saw his name, you see, I thought of Mickey Rooney right away because part of the movie is the let's-put-on-a-show premise.

SEGEL: Absolutely.

GROSS: Because part of the plot is that when Walter, you know, gets to the Muppet studio and sees that the Muppets' old theater is, like, it's dilapidated, and they have to raise $10 million in order to buy the studio back, it's like, well, how are we going to do it. Well, let's put on a show and raise some money. And that is so Mickey Rooney. It's literally from "Babes in Arms" with him and Judy Garland.

So I thought immediately of Mickey Rooney, and then I saw that Michael Rooney was a choreographer, and I thought Wikipedia time, let's see...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Let's see if he's - so anyway, I think what I'm trying to say is I can't believe that you didn't think of that.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: Yeah, no, I really didn't put it together. I was really thinking about singing and dancing at that point. I hadn't really thought it through.

STOLLER: They also look quite similar.

SEGEL: They look like twins, exactly.

STOLLER: Michael Rooney looks like a tall Mickey Rooney.

SEGEL: Yeah, it's really true.

GROSS: Okay, so once you realized you have Mickey Rooney and his son on the set, did you talk about all of those let's-put-on-a-show kind of movies?

SEGEL: Yeah, well, he's - you know, it's funny. Like, he comes from an era that's sort of, it's bygone now, but he really was a Disney guy, you know, back in the old studio system.

And so he at the end of one of his takes, at the end of his day of filming, they said all right, that's a wrap on Mickey Rooney, and Mickey Rooney said: Before I go, I'd just like to take a minute to thank the wonderful family at Disney not just for this film but for all of the wonderful films that they've done in the past and will do in the future.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: I'm like wow, that is from a different time. It was really neat to see.

DAVIES: Jason Segel and Nick Stoller wrote the movie "The Muppets," and Segel also starred in the film. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: We're listening to Terry's interview with Nick Stoller and Jason Segel, who wrote the movie "The Muppets," which is now out on DVD. Segel also starred in the film.

GROSS: Let's play another song, and this is another great song that Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords wrote. It's called "Am I A Man, or Am I Muppet?" And Jason, you sing half of the song, and Walter, the Muppet, sings the other half. Do you want to describe the premise?

SEGEL: Yes, this is about, you know, halfway through the film, if not a little later, and Walter and I, who are as close as can be, are starting to drift apart because Walter is realizing that he needs to be with the Muppets, and I'm realizing that I should probably grow up and further my relationship with Amy Adams. And we're having a hard time breaking away from each other.

This was one of my favorite things I've ever done in my career. I think this song is so funny.

GROSS: It is really funny. So you sing it, and the new Muppet that you've created for this movie, Walter, sings it, too. So here it is.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AM I A MAN, OR AM I MUPPET?")

SEGEL: (As Gary) (Singing) I reflect on my reflection, and I ask myself the question: What's the right direction to go? I don't know. Am I a man, or am I a Muppet? If I'm a Muppet then I'm a very manly Muppet. Am I a Muppet, or am I a man? If I'm a man that makes me a Muppet of a man.

LINZ: (As Walter) (Singing) I look into these eyes, and I don't recognize the one I see inside. It's time for me to decide: Am I a man, or am I a Muppet? If I'm a Muppet, well I'm a very manly Muppet. Am I a Muppet, or am I a man? If I'm a man that makes me a Muppet of a man.

LINZ: (As characters) (Singing) Here I go again. I'm always running out of time. I think I made up my mind. Now I understand who I am.

SEGEL: (As Gary) (Singing) I'm a man.

LINZ: (As Walter) (Singing) I'm a Muppet....

GROSS: So that was "Man Or Muppet," featuring Jason Segel and the new Muppet Walter, from "The Muppets" soundtrack, and Walter is performed by Peter Linz.

So you had to create a new Muppet for this movie, the character of Walter, who's your brother, Jason Segel, in the film. So now that you had a chance to create an actual Muppet that would be part of the franchise, so to speak, what did you want Walter, the new Muppet, to look like and behave like?

SEGEL: The goal was that he was just a wide-eyed innocent who sort of - he reminds me of maybe what Kermit was before Kermit became famous, you know, when Kermit was still living in the swamp.

And I think literally in describing Walter initially, we said that he was completely nondescript, which was our version of sort of calling him the Everyman. We didn't want him to look too particularly like anything.

GROSS: And what was it like to cast the performer to play Walter? And what does it mean to play Walter? What does the performer have to do?

SEGEL: Sure. Well, we auditioned quite a few people to play Walter, and then Peter Linz walked in, and talk about a no-brainer. He really was Walter instantly. I'm glad you asked what the puppeteer has to do.

The sad thing is that their job is, at the end of the day, to be invisible. You know, you're not supposed to think about the puppeteer. But in reality, these guys are acting, they're puppeteering, they're singing, they're dancing, they're doing improv.

A lot of times, you know, they're being contortionists. If a puppet is sitting on a couch talking, that means there's a puppeteer scrunched into a hollowed-out couch. And at the end of the day, you're not ever supposed to think about the puppeteer, and they're the true geniuses behind this movie.

GROSS: So how does it work exactly? These are - like, the Muppets are all hand puppets, and the body of the puppeteer has to be hidden. That's quite a directorial problem, too, isn't it?

SEGEL: Oh, yeah, the building of the sets is crazy and the logistics of what James had to do. You know, we - it's easy for Nick and I to imagine scenes. We wrote a scene that was supposed to 10 full-body Muppets running away in slow motion from an exploding building. It's easy to write it, and then James asked us how we were going to do it, and we said we had no idea.

And he explained that that was impossible. So he had to do the heavy lifting.

GROSS: Like for instance there's a scene - this isn't a special effects scene, this is kind of delightful. Jason, you and Amy Adams and all the Muppets, or a lot of the Muppets, are in a car together, you know, talking and singing. And you of course are so much bigger than the Muppets are.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: Yeah.

GROSS: You've got this, like, big smile on your face, but I was wondering if you were actually in the car with the Muppets when that was shot, or whether you were kind of added in.

SEGEL: I was. No, no, we did very, very little CGI. I was in the car with Amy, and there were 10 puppeteers scrunched into the car below us. And we had so many Muppets in the car in that scene that Amy and I were actually puppeteering while we were sitting there.

GROSS: No, really?

SEGEL: Yeah, I had the puppet on either side of me, and Amy had a puppet on either side of her. So we were doing all of it. It was really cool. It was a cool experience.

GROSS: God, that must have been heaven for you.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: It was. I was thrilled. I think I had Animal and Dr. Teeth on my hands.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: And it was like - it was the greatest moment of my life.

STOLLER: And he wouldn't take them off.

GROSS: Now are you allowed to do that, like, franchise-wise? Is that legal for you to do them?

SEGEL: It is, yeah. You know, what they do in cases like that is they add the voices in later. So you're puppeteering, and then the guys who do the voice of the puppets, who are operating the other puppets they do, are going to add the voices later. It's pretty crazy.

GROSS: When you auditioned for Walter, did you - of course you had to have the would-be performer sing, right, as part of the audition?

SEGEL: Yes, we sang. He and I sang "Love Will Keep Us Together" as a duet.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

SEGEL: With him and Walter. We gave people, like, three or four choices of duets, and Walter and I sang, Peter Linz and I sang "Love Will Keep Us Together." He was just great.

GROSS: So when you got access to the Muppets for the movie, were there, like, was there like a book of guidelines that you were handed in order to, like, you know, honor the Muppets' legacy and work within the rules of the Muppet kingdom and everything?

STOLLER: There are a set of rules that, you know, that puppeteers kind of, you know, explained to us as we were working on the script. And so, you know, in one of our - in our earliest draft, Jason's character Gary and Walter were - he was a ventriloquist on the Venice Beach boardwalk, and Walter was his puppet, and they had this amazing act, and then you reveal that Walter's actually alive and wants to be a Muppet.

And the puppeteers explained to us that we couldn't - that in the world, Muppets think of themselves as people. They're not puppets. They're not, you know, Kermit's a frog, he's not a puppet and that that would kind of break one of the kind of cardinal rules of the world.

And so we changed that very quickly to what, you know, to what's in the current - so there are a lot of kind of rules like that that make the world whole.

SEGEL: And then there are just - there are rules that you know viscerally if you love the Muppets, like the Muppets are never mean to people. The Muppets don't get laughs at other people's expense. It's part of what I really loved about the Muppets is they don't even want to destroy their villains, for example. They want to reform their villains.

In the first Muppet movie, Doc Hopper, played by Charles Durning, wants to cut off Kermit's legs and make frogs legs, and as opposed to destroy him, Kermit is, like, oh, maybe you should think about why you don't have friends, and, you know, maybe you're just lonely, and you need to be a happier person. It's like the Muppets are pure.

DAVIES: Jason Segel and Nick Stoller wrote the movie "The Muppets," which is now out on DVD. Segel also starred in the film. We'll hear more of their conversation with Terry in the second half of the show. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for I'm Terry Gross. We're listening to Terry's interview with Nick Stoller and Jason Segel, who wrote and served as executive producers for the movie "The Muppets," which was released last year. Segel is also one of the film's human stars. It's now out on DVD.

Stoller and Segel also collaborated on the film "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Terry spoke with them in November when "The Muppets" was released in theaters.

When we left off, Segel was explaining how he appreciated the long-standing guidelines for Muppet characters - that they were never mean or vindictive, for example. But in the new film, we meet some Muppet imitators who are a little nastier than the originals.

GROSS: You have like this cover band that you created called the Moopets.

SEGEL: Yes.

GROSS: And it's, you know, like - you describe it, 'cause I don't even know what language to use now.

SEGEL: You're right. They're the only way that you could create Muppets that were bad was to literally do like the comic book style Bizarro Muppets. So they are the exact opposite of the Muppets. They're Kermut, Fuzie, Rowlf and Animul. And they are the evil version of the Muppets. You're right, actually. They're the only evil Muppets I've ever seen.

NICK STOLLER: Mm-hmm.

SEGEL: And so there the big threat is that Tex Richman, played by Chris Cooper, who is just an absolute genius, has potential to get the rights to the Muppet name and his plan is to replace the Muppets with this evil, cynical version of the Muppets called the Moopets.

GROSS: And the Moopets have been working basically as a cover band. You know how a lot of old band have like one member of the original band and the rest are all just musicians that they picked up, so it's a band like this.

SEGEL: That's right.

GROSS: Like one of the real Muppets is in the band but everybody else is like a Moopet.

SEGEL: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: And everybody - like all the Moopets are really like they're mean, they're nasty, they're cynical. And so the song that they're singing in this, they're a lounge act at a casino. Is it Reno or Vegas? I can't remember.

SEGEL: It's Reno and it's called the Pechoolo Casino. And Fozzie Bear, the consummate performer, is the only remaining member of the Muppets performing in this band and he's taken all of the original beautiful Muppet songs and has changed the lyrics so that they describe the Pechoolo Casino's specials and hotel deals.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: And this is like a very sacrilegious thing to do in Muppet world.

SEGEL: It is.

GROSS: So therefore let's hear the Moopet version of "The Rainbow Connection," which is basically an ad...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

GROSS: ...for this hotel in his lounge they are performing.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RAINBOW CONNECTION")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (as character) (Singing) Why are there such great deals on our hotel rooms? And continental breakfast is free. Breakfast is free. HBO in every room. And free gas if you check in after noon. Free parking for cars, not RVs. Not RVs. Our wedding chapel is 24 hours. No marriage certificate is needed. No marriage certificate is needed. We're glad you found it. Pechoolo Casino. The owners. The Moopets. And me. Cha cha cha. Thank you. Thank you. You're a great audience.

GROSS: So that's the Moopets, the Muppets cover band of like bad guy Muppets from the soundtrack of the new movie "The Muppets." My guests, Jason Segel and Nick Stoller, wrote the movie. Jason Segel stars in it.

So tell me more about what the Muppets meant to you as kids. Like which were your favorite characters?

STOLLER: I mean, you know, being a, you know, comedy writer, comedy director, general comedy nerd, they were kind of the first thing I watched that made me say I want to do that. I remember as a kid, you know, the Muppets kind of very quickly lead to watching "Saturday Night Live" and "Mighty Python" and all those other shows. But it's the first thing you want as a kid, that...

GROSS: As for people who don't remember, the Muppets used to be - in the first season of "Saturday Night Live" the Muppets were regulars.

STOLLER: Right. Yeah. And they also, I think, really set the stage for, you know, "The Simpsons" and for, you know, the Pixar movies and for a lot of comedy, you know, family comedy in particular, that appeals to both kids and adults, that's, you know, that's a little bit more complicated than just something that just appeals to kids.

GROSS: Now, I've read, and a lot of people might read this too, that there is a couple of people who performed Muppets in the past who thinks that this movie kind of like violates some Muppets traditions. And particularly because there's like a whoopee cushion joke, so it's kind of like a fart joke - it's a whoopee cushion. So did you get any criticisms like that from the inside, from the Muppet family?

SEGEL: I think more than anything they were, they made those comments before they saw the film. I think that they were just nervous about what we were going to do. One of our producers put it best. We're by definition the stepparents in this, you know? And no matter how good the stepparent is, the kids are always going to be skeptical of them and give them a hard time.

STOLLER: Also, I didn't realize until, you know, working on the movie how much the puppeteers have lived and breathed Muppets for, you know, 30 years. You know, Steve Whitmire has worked on this for 30 years. And so I, you know, if I'd worked on something for 30 years and two guys came in and said we're doing the next thing, I would be, I would certainly have my back up, you know.

GROSS: I wish you both the best. I want to thank you both so much for talking with us.

SEGEL: Thank you. It's a real honor to be on your show again. Thank you so much.

STOLLER: Thank you so much.

DAVIES: Jason Segel and Nick Stoller wrote the movie "The Muppets," which is now out on DVD. Segel also starred in the film. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.